Who said waste is just waste? The toilet, and the accompanying human waste, could save your life if, like astronaut Mark Watney in "The Martian," you are stranded on Mars and are desperately searching for something to fertilize the soil so you can grow potatoes. In a more down to Earth instance, it might also pay for your coffee or lunch.

Such is the case at a university in South Korea, where human waste does not go to waste, but instead is being used to help power a building.

Cho Jae-weon, an urban and environmental engineering professor at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), has designed an eco-friendly toilet connected to a laboratory that uses excrement to produce biogas and manure.

The BeeVi toilet, a portmanteau of the words bee and vision, uses a vacuum pump to send feces into an underground tank, reducing water use. There, microorganisms break down the waste to methane, which becomes a source of energy for the building, powering a gas stove, hot-water boiler and solid oxide fuel cell.

"If we think out of the box, feces has precious value to make energy and manure. I have put this value into ecological circulation," Cho said.

An average person defecates about 500 grams (17 ounces) a day, which can be converted to 50 liters of methane gas, the environmental engineer said. This gas can generate 0.5kWh of electricity or be used to drive a car for about 1.2 kilometers (0.75 miles).

Cho has devised a virtual currency called Ggool, which means honey in Korean. Each person using the eco-friendly toilet earns 10 Ggool a day.

Students can use the currency to buy goods on campus, from freshly brewed coffee to instant cup noodles, fruits and books. The students can pick up the products they want at a shop and scan a QR code to pay with Ggool.

"I had only ever thought that feces are dirty, but now it is a treasure of great value to me," postgraduate student Heo Hui-jin said at the Ggool market. "I even talk about feces during mealtimes to think about buying any book I want."